This picture in this story just makes me laugh, but it makes me feel bad too. I first heard about it on Memorial day but forgot to post about it (it actually made it on digg). Anyway, there’s been a big hub-bub in Texas about the TAKS tests, assessment tests that every student must take and pass to graduate, and weather or not we should have them. Well, a school in Ft. Worth decided not to let the students who failed the TAKS but passed grade wise (some with 3.5 GPAs) walk across the stage for graduation, they’d have to wait until they passed the test. Some schools let the kids walk, eventhough they technically didn’t pass, on the basis of they would pass the test later in the summer. This infuriated many students and their parents. So what do they do when graudation day comes, they protest. One of them was holding this sign
Let are kids walk. That cracks me up. Obviously the sign is backwards, so maybe they realized the mistake and wrote the correct statement on the front. But still. I feel bad because I’m no grammer expert and you could probably find alot of errors in this post, and folks make mistakes from time to time, but just the fact they are protesting about a test they can’t pass and the sign has improper grammer. You can’t write irony like that.
I wrote this post a while ago and had it saved, and kinda forgot about it, so just thought I’d throw it out.
So I bought this little device called the kill a watt energy monitor that can tell you all sorts of things about energy use in your home. Amazon.com has them for half off at $25 bucks. I just did some quick testing with it, mainly finding out how many watts my appliances use in their on and off states. Here’s what I found.
Now I have most of my stuff hooked up to power strip\surge protectors so I just tested those and whatever was plugged into it.
In my room:
1st power strip consisting of a computer, speakers, monitor, and wireless router.
Everything running - 150 watts
Everything off but power strip on 11 watts
2nd power strip consisting of T.V., cable box, stereo
Everything running 127 watts
off\ power strip on 22 watts
Alarm clock 1 watt (sitting idle, didn’t test while going off)
In living room
1st power strip consisting of T.V. (a big one), cable box, Playstation 2, surround sound system with powered subwoofer.
Everything on 260 watts
Off\ power strip still on 103 watts
Other stuff.
Cordless phone x2 6 watts each
I didn’t test anything in roger’s room but he has a T.V. And dvd player plus an alarm clock. Everything else is major appliances like the fridge, water heater, and heater. The Kill A Watt has a feature that can give you cumulative power usage over a period of time, days, weeks, whatever. Perfect for the fridge, I think I’ll try to find out how much my kegerator pulls someday.
So Just in the living room and my bedroom we have 149 watts of power being consumed while nothing is “on”. The same as leaving a couple of lights (incadecent that is) on all the time. It’s pretty easy to convince someone to turn off the lights when they leave the room, little do they know the room is still sucking power. I put everything on power strips on purpose because I don’t have enough plugs for everything and I’ve gotten into the habit of turning off the strips when I’m not home or not using them. Probably why you haven’t seen me on instant messenger, my computer is off most the time. Sticking to the laptop most of the time.
Why go to all this trouble you say? First of all it’s not that much trouble some to switch off a power strip. Secondly, it saves money on the electric bill. Third, I’m relying less on fossil fuels, how you say? Take an excerpt from this website http://www.puc.state.tx.us/nrelease/2001/020101.cfm
Texans also will benefit from a diversified power supply. About 46 percent of the electricity in Texas come from natural gas-fired plants. Coal and Texas lignite supply about 41 percent of the fuel mix, with 13 percent coming from nuclear plants. The rapidly growing renewable energy sector currently supplies less than one percent of the state’s electricity. Already more than 20 wind projects have been proposed in West Texas and several are under construction.
Most of our electricity comes from natural gas and coal, fossil fuels. I’m surprised hydro power wasn’t on the list, thought we had more of that around here.
Really interesting video I saw a few weeks ago. Kinda scary, but interesting. It’s not new so you may have seen it already. I finally figured out how to post videos with the new wordpress, just needed to download a plugin, duh.
Speaking of the Deep Ellum tunnel, just found this video of all the great art work local artists put all over it. According to this post in the Dallas Observers blog unfair park some of the artwork will be held onto and kept somewhere’s else. I was down there about 3 months ago and half the tunnel was already gone, sad to see it go, it was the unofficial gateway/ entrance to Deep Ellum. I was going to post the video in here but wordpress gets screwed up now, when I post a video, so just go to the link, it’s on youtube.
I have to confess I’ve become addicted to internet soap opera drama called youtube, mainly the video blogs, or vlogs. If you don’t know what youtube is, it’s a website that anyone can upload any video and everyone can view it. You can post comments and rate the videos also. You can even make a video response to a video. Thousands of videos are posted on a daily basis and most of them are stupid. I think many of them are just posted in order for someone to show them to friends, without paying to host them. But if a youtube users post more than one video you can subscribe to their “channel”, which makes it easy to keep up with the actual interesting videos.
Which is where the video bloggers come in, I keep up with a few, and most are actually pretty dumb, I guess it’s like a reality tv thing. Dumb and not really entertaining but you can’t stop watching. FilthyWhore, Rennetto, Geriatric1927, Riffage.com, and Lonelygirl15, and Danielbeast are the ones I watch. I admit my interest if fading in some of them, but check for yourself.
But, I just want to talk about Lonelygirl15, there is a huge amount of controversy and conspiracy theorys about her videos. You may have read about her in magzines like the New York times, she is the most subscibed to and most of her videos have over 200,000 views, with thousands of comments on each.
I’ll give you the basic run down on her story, so you don’t have to watch every video. LG (I’ll refer to her as LG from now on) is 15 and is very cute which maybe why she’s so high in rankings , she’s home-schooled, her parents don’t know she records and posts videos on youtube, she only has one friend who goes by Danielbeast( and has his own videos, and he’s obviously in love with her.) He helps her edit her videos, in fact they are they only two people you ever see, and almost all videos take place in her bedroom. The issue of religion come up in her videos, and DB (Danielbeast) describes it as weird, but they won’t reveal what it is. In one of her videos you catch a glipse of a picture of Alister Crowley with candles around it, a.k.a. a shrine. She says she’s home-schooled because she was ridiculed about being a teachers pet, the kids poked fun at her, claiming her relationship with the teacher was more than friends. She makes her parents out to be very protective, hence the reason to pull her out of school. Basically, she portrays herself as a super smart teenager who doesn’t have much access to the outside world, and talks about her life on youtube to her 26,930 subscribers.
Here’s where the fun comes in. It’s rumored that this is a viral marketing campaign, and a big corporation is behind this, for several reasons.
1.Lonelygirl15.com was registered a few weeks before the first video, although the site wasn’t public until after the first video, and it’s a fan site. How could a fan register a site before the first video
2.Lonelygirl15 was trademarked on the day of her first video.
3.The lighting and editing in her videos are really good, out of the scope of the average 15 year old.
Among other things.
(By the way, everything I read about LG is off the web, and it could all be fake. Could there be fake blogs and newsstories about a real LG, or the other way around, who knows. Although I believe the magazine articles are based on fact, but they mostly write about her popularity and youtube as a new media medium. )
If it is a marketing campaign, it’s definatley cost effective, free to post the videos, over 2 million total views of LG’s videos. Some think it’s a big corporation gearing up for a product launch, some think a religious group could be behind it, some think it could be some people, film students maybe, just experimenting with the youtube medium and the whole thing is scripted. Or it could be real, which at this point would be a let down.
If you want it explained better read this blog post.
Here’s a sample video from LG.
This shit’s better than Lost. One problem is everyone on youtube are making videos claiming to know who LG is (probably to gain subscribers to thier videos), and they are obviously bullshitting, so nobody knows what’s real anymore. What ever it is it’s generating a buzz, and the videos just came out in july. They got me hooked.
On another note there is one guy on youtube that is for real, I think. He goes by Geriatric1927 and he is a widow from england, and possibly the oldest person on youtube. He is telling his life story 10 minutes at a time (youtube limits you to 10 minute videos) and he has 16 videos so far. Very interesting. probably the only thing on youtube with substance.
Been kind of a bum lately, not much going on. Don’t really have any goals right now. I remember a few parties around the holidays, parties where I didn’t know anyone, and people try to strike up small talk. They say, “So what do you do for fun?” Honestly, I don’t have a real answer. I always come back with “Hang out at bars” with a fake laugh after it. Lame I know. There are things I enjoy doing, but when they say that, I take it as what do I do as a hobby, or often. I like to brew beer, ride my bike, etc.. but nothing I strive to do everyday or on a regular basis. Nothing that makes me want to hurry up and get home from work to do. Video games used to do that for me, but not anymore. Games change to quickly for me to buy the next new thing, in order to keep up with the online friends, maybe I should get back into it, of course that would require an XBOX 360. Which I can’t afford. I need some goals, something to work for. Off-grid living has been inspiring me lately, not only because it’s good for the enviroment and for me. But the technology, the DIY attitude, and the fuck the man inspiration is just plain cool. Plus, if we don’t change things soon, as a world, I think we’ll be forced into off-grid living anyhow. Mainly because there won’t be a grid to speak of. Goals, hmmm……Get back to ya on this one.
I was at Wal-Mart about a month ago (this is not the bad part) and I was shopping for food as part of my cook out more plan, and I saw this big box of Tilapia fillets. Frozen, individually wrapped, family pack. I bought it, fish is good for you right? So about a month goes by and I open the box, the fillets are not more than a 1/4 inch thick, I think how the hell do you cook these, the second you put them in the pan there burnt. I set some out in the refrig to thaw a few days ago, and decide to cook some tonight. Well I get to reading the package, they’re imported by the way, and of course there is Chinese writing on them, but I read the english part. The ingredients, are you ready:
Tilapia and Carbon Monoxide (to retain natural color)
I’m not shitting you, I took pic, See for yourself.
Carbon Monoxide, car exhaust (among other things), it can kill you. People die all the time from this (West Virgina coal miners come to mind) . People use this to commit suicide. It is never good for you, and I’m supposed to eat it!! I really don’t know what to do, I think I should call the local news or tell Wal-Mart about this. Maybe it was translated into English wrong. But I’m not eating it, no way. What do you think I should do? I’m a little freaked out, this should not be anywhere near food much less in food. Damn!
My dad bought some software recently and it came with a free “digicam”. This thing is sooo cheap, I mean a disposable camera looks better in quality. He even gave it to me to try out, he didn’t even want it on his PC. So I was reading the instructions (I always read the instructions first) and the english section is at the back, right after the the Chinese section. The translation of some of it is poor, a.k.a funny.
Such as:
Vedioimpression is an easy used video edit software. It can edit new video files base to the current video files, and the content of it will be display on the desk. It can be used to the digital video edit and it has the same help function of the Photoimpression. It makes you very easy to master the using method.
Through snatch the video frequency, the digital camera can take the digital video and save in the hardware for enjoyness.
What if …
AT&T and Verizon blocked you from viewing your favorite podcasts and blogs?
BellSouth cut off your net phone because you weren’t using their service?
Comcast forced you to download MP3s from their store while slowing other music sites?
This threat is more real than you might think. Right now, the major communications companies are planning to discriminate against the online content and services that they don’t yet control. (Learn more at Free Press)
Their executives are already on the record:
* AT&T’s Ed Whitacre wants consumers and content providers to pay for use of his network. “The Internet can’t be free … for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts.”
* BellSouth’s William Smith told reporters that he would like to turn the Internet into a “pay-for-performance marketplace” where his company could charge for the “right” to have certain services load faster than others.
* Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg says that Web applications need to “share the cost” of the broadband services already paid for by consumers. “We need to pay for the pipe.”
They want to boost profits by playing gatekeeper to the applications we use and the content we create. They want to give preferential treatment to their own high-end services while blocking or slowing access to everyone else’s.
STOP THEM NOW. Send your letter to the CEOs and Congress.
The Threat Is Real
This broadband assault would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we’ve come to expect online. It would shift the digital revolution into reverse.
Internet gatekeepers have already:
* Blocked services: In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
* Blocked content: In 2005, Canada’s telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.
If these media giants get their way, they’ll shut down the free flow of information and dictate how you use the Internet forever.
Legislation to kill Net freedom is being drafted right now in Congress. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD.
The Stakes are High
The Internet is the future of all media. It must continue to be governed by the principle of “network neutrality.” The network’s only job should be to move data between users regardless of where it comes from or what it contains. This fundamental principle has allowed independent voices — like dot-com entrepreneurs, bloggers and open-source programmers — to try out new ideas without having to pay extra or ask for permission.
As tech guru David Eisenberg explains: “A hobbyist collecting Pez dispensers could develop the idea to become E-bay. A couple of Stanford students could start Google and build a better search engine. Two guys in Europe could assemble a handful of programmers to invent Skype and threaten the trillion-dollar annual global tel-economy.”
But now, the cable and telco giants want to eliminate this open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling innovation.
It’s not like anyone reads my blog anyway, but I want them to have the right. Send a letter to your congressman and CEO of these companies to try to stop this.
Nearly one fifth of you has been patented. This is crazy, first of all I didn’t know you could patent something natural or that already existed. Secondly what incentive does this give a pharmacuetical company to develop a drug for a disease that they’ll have to pay patent rights for. But no need to worry they’ll just pass the cost down to us, and we’ll have to pay more for drugs, I’m sure.
Well, I’m on My space now. Haven’t quite figured out the point yet, seems to be all about getting the most friends and networking with strangers. It’s a free service though and you can blog and meet people. So far I have 8 friends, which are friends in real life, so I still don’t know what the point is, and I’ve been contacted by someone in Mesquite,Texas who thinks I’m cool, she’s a teacher and works at a bar, plus there are no pictures of her. Also, the I love T-shirts and FriscoTX singles groups want me to join them. It’s one of the hardest websites to navigate, I usually stumble upon what I’m trying to do by accident. I mean there in not even a login button for me to log in to my account. But one cool thing is you can send a bulletin out to all your friends, say about my b-day party. Roger got on it first, and in order for me to view parts of his myspace account I had to be on myspace, so that’s why I joined. Mainly all we do is post embarassing or funny pics on each others pages. I guess anyone can start a myspace group, because there are groups for everything like, Bush is a retard group or the Drunks group. There’s a kinda six degrees of separation thing going on here, but not neccessarily six degrees, every friend I have has over 20 friends, and those friends have 20 friends, so on , and so on. Tom was my first friend, he started MySpace and he’s everyone’s first friend, he has like 39 million friends, so I’m pretty sure you can link everyone to everyone else. If you’re on MySpace be my Friend.
Clark, Texas recently voted to change thier name to Dish, Texas, in exchange for ten years free Dish network service, for all 125 residents. I predict they become one of the fattest cities soon.
